Kurt Schmidt

Keynote Speaker

As Foundry’s President, Kurt leads the company’s strategic direction while also casting a wide net to meet with businesses in order to understand their challenges and evangelize how Foundry can help them through design and software development.

Already an accomplished competitive biker at 20, Kurt founded a successful bike company (still going strong). Leaving that in the 90s to “get a real job,” he earned his degree in Visual Communications and became a graphic designer, then pivoted quickly with the dawning internet to build websites for Harry Potter book Illustrator Mary Grand Pré. Next, he joined agency DreamWorld and grew the team from two to 30 people in five years. Kurt joined The Nerdery in 2010 and helped them grow from 50-500 Nerds in six years. As Director of Project Management, Kurt’s team delivered over $300M worth of custom software development. Nerdery promoted Kurt to Digital Strategy Director.

In 2016 Kurt joined Foundry as employee number six and Director of Strategy in order to take all his years of experience and build a new kind of software company. In a former-Foundry conference room converted into a recording studio, Kurt moonlights as a podcaster – literally right under the noses of Foundry’s permissive co-founders – as host of The Schmidt List, with weekly interviews featuring other movers and makers. Likewise, Kurt is far from shy about public speaking. As a man of leisure, Kurt still bikes a lot (including a unicycle) but tends to spend more time with his family while also enjoying BBQ, skating and video games.